Tomorrow is the deadline for hedge funds to register with the SEC, and the agency says it expects to receive about 70% more applicants than originally anticipated. In July the agency predicted that only about 750 applicants would seek registration. The SEC raised the number to 1,3000.
The Dodd-Frank Act included the registration provision for hedge funds and private equity advisers so that the SEC could have a better understanding of the area. In an interview with Bloomberg news, Cornelius Hurley, the director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law, said the surge in registrations is “an indication of how much” the agency “Did not know beforehand.”
The SEC has not hired new staff to focus on reviewing the registration applications specifically, although the office that conducts examinations has hired 60 more staff members over the past 18 months. The SEC completed the registration in June, estimating that the 750 predicted advisors would spend 38,000 hours and $9.6 million to comply with the rule.
Private equity companies, hedge funds with more than $150 million in assets under management, and foreign advisors without a US business and most venture capital funds are exempt from registration.
